Education

Taylor. Mike Taylor (618/SSAI) participated in Maryland Day 2018 at University of Maryland, College Park on April 28. Landsat Communications engaged the general public in discussion about the EM Spectrum with a focus on visible light and Near Infrared. The activity shows them spectral signatures, how we use them and how we use visible and invisible portions of the EM Spectrum to look at Earth using hands on learning devices such a handheld spectrometer, NIR filter goggles and a matching game.

Presentations

Lagomasino. David Lagomasino (618/UMD) and Priscilla Baltezar (618/UMD) were invited to be keynote speakers at Humboldt State University (HSU) for a Raza Empowerment Day. The purpose was for Priscilla and David to discuss their background, experience entering the NASA workforce, current research projects, and why diversity is important to NASA research and science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. In addition they also interacted with students in the Indian Natural Resources, Science, and Engineering Program (INRSEP).

Poulter. Ben Poulter (618) attended "The Future of Earth System Modeling" workshop at Caltech to discuss complexity and simplicity in Land and Biosphere Modeling. He discussed how land use and land cover change is currently implemented in land-surface models and how new remote sensing observations of forest structure will present novel opportunities to reduce uncertainties.

Fatoyinbo. On March 19, Lola Fatoyinbo (618) gave the Sigma Xi distinguished Lecturer Seminar at SUNY Purchase College, NY entitled: "Tree hugging meets Rocket Science-Space Aged Estimation of Global Carbon Stocks." The audience was college students in sciences and other majors.

External Interactions

Fatoyinbo. On March 27, Lola Fatoyinbo (618) presented at the Smithsonian FutureCon event entitled "NASA science in the Extremes". The event was part of the AwesomeCon Conference in Washington DC. The event was featured on NASA's Social media platforms and covered by the media.

Brown de Colstoun. Eric Brown de Colstoun (618) was recently invited to speak to 150 7th graders from Annapolis Middle School about NASA Missions, NASA Earth Sciences and his own career path and research on Landsat Land Cover and Urbanization. Annapolis Middle School is part of the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IB MYP) and students were beginning their research into space and environmental sciences, rockets and propulsion systems.

Brown de Colstoun. Eric Brown de Colstoun (618) recently spoke to a cohort of french-speaking diplomats at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute (FSI) in Arlington VA. The diplomats recently completed their language-specific training and exams at FSI and will be deploying shortly to various frenchspeaking countries throughout the world. Brown de Colstoun spoke about NASA Earth Sciences and the GLOBE Educational Program (globe.gov). The students also participated in a brief hands on land cover validation exercise using GLOBE protocols.

Delgado. From astronauts to comic book characters and movie heroes, NASA's ICESat-2 exhibit was a crowd pleaser of interaction and creativity at Washington DC's AwesomeCon. The sand box on display illustrates the elevation map changes and mapping capabilities of the ATLAS laser instrument on board the upcoming launch in September. ICESat-2 will use these measurements to record changes in the ice sheet, forestry, and sea surface levels among other applications. Shown above from left to right: Brent Smith (610.1 /SSAI), Sabrina Delgado A. (618.0/SSAI), and Oscar Hendrick (610.1/ADNET).